Star Wars: The Old Republic Random Question/Discussion thread - F2P

[Ohemgee]

Still debating to be a Jedi Sentinel or a Commando. Anyone from the beta play these classes? I understand Trooper is OP for pvp (huttball especially), but good melees can make do.

Any noticeable DPS differences?

[DeathbySnoosnoo]

commando = useful
sentinel not even remotely useful until tweeked out with top of the line gear and talents at 50
at least atm

tho sentinel is more fun to play in my book >.>

[vrumpt]

Update on testing with details for EU folk.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...=1#post8885761

As promised, we have an update on the batch of Game Testing invites being sent to players in the EU.

After a lengthy discussion here at the BioWare offices, the decision has been made to postpone the proposed Game Testing invites for EU players for a number of reasons.

Firstly, there’s a new build of the game on the horizon. This is a major build, meaning there will be character wipes and a new client to download. As you may be aware, the current client download is around 27GB in size. If we were to invite players en masse today, those players would have to download the entirety of the client to access the game. There’s every chance that later this week, the service will go offline and this new version will be rolled out, meaning everyone currently in Testing will have to not only download the entire client again (another 27GB download), but will also have their characters erased and have to start afresh. This is a relatively large amount to download in such a short space of time and not an experience we want new testers to be exposed to.

Secondly, this new build will bring about the first localised versions of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which means those of you that speak French and German will have the chance to play the game in those languages, for the first time ever. We’re extremely excited to be able to offer this to our players and as such, we’re keen to get a lot of feedback from European testers in particular.

For those of you that may have missed the messages we put out on the subject already, last week saw a number of issues arise with key systems that prevented us from sending out invites to EU players. Had everything gone to plan, we would have been able to offer two weeks of testing time to new users. However, given the issues that arose, this was physically not possible.

So while we understand that this news may not be what a lot of you wanted to hear today, we hope that you’ll understand our position. Given the news of this new build, it’s now more important than ever that we invite European players into the Game Testing environments, so you have my word that this batch of invites will happen, it may just mean you just have to wait a little longer.

It’s also important to remember this is just the beginning. In the future, we’ll be inviting more and more testers to the EU Game Testing environments as well as future Game Testing weekends. So even if you’re not invited to this next round of testing, there will still be plenty of chances to get involved.

As ever, as soon as I get any firm news around the matter, I’ll make sure to update everyone.

[Ohemgee]

The beauty of multiple terabyte hard drives.

[Purrrfect]

EA sure does make it a pain in the dick to cancel a preorder if you went through origin, fyi.

[XalienLevi]

The current test build is going down on the 12th. New build coming in the next couple of weeks.

[Katlan]

does that mean re-dl? too lazy to look at forums

[Gokulo]

Apparently. They said they're not sending out EU invited yet because people would need to re-download pretty fast.

[DeathbySnoosnoo]

yea you have to uninstall and reDL, its annoying. Lets just hope this new build is better than the current clusterfuck.

[Katlan]

Ya, felt pointless last time to re-DL the client. U don't need a re-dl for better graphics options as many games update their graphics after it's gone live, nor do u need a re-DL for balance changes. So I hope they do some serious changes aside making it a pretty version of the game that performs worse in every way.

[vrumpt]

no more beta weekend tests for a bit.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showp...&postcount=337

Hello all,

There is no Beta Testing Weekend scheduled for this weekend. There may be further Beta Testing Weekends during September, but we're not going to guarantee it. The weekend that just finished was really our first dry run of Beta Testing Weekends as a whole, and we have plenty of data to crunch, and decisions to make before we start things up again.

Further to that, as Chris Collins explained in another thread, we are about to roll out a major new build for The Old Republic. That build won't be ready for this weekend. Just as we did not feel it was a good decision to ask potential EU testers to download our client only to have to download it again, the same applies for this weekend.

That does not mean, however, that as soon as our new build is available we'll be rolling out a Beta Testing Weekend immediately. As with any new build of the game, we need to get feedback from internal testing and our ongoing Game Testing program before rolling it out to a massive audience. That process takes a while, and that time varies depending on how testing goes.

We rolled out this previous weekend as a relatively small scale event; from now we will do bigger and bigger events, but that doesn't mean it happens every weekend. When we do resume, we'll be inviting many more people in.

While many of you are excited and anxious to know what's happening regarding Testing Weekends, I want to point out that a lot of posts on the subject with a lack of corresponding posts from us does not mean that we're not listening, or not aware of your interest. It shows your interest in the topic, which is understandably high, but we will not always be able to react instantaneously.

In the past couple of days we've been preparing a comprehensive FAQ regarding Game Testing Weekends as a whole, along with some details about the weekend that just happened. We'll post that tomorrow - in all languages, as we know the subject is of interest to everyone.

I'm extremely frustrated with how Bioware is doing everything. It seems very poor and doesn't bode well at all for whats in store later on. They promise us testing weekends, and instead turn around and say "no, not really. maybe once or twice. maybe." Its just bullshit at this point. I could understand for maybe a few things, but redoing entire key systems because they weren't set up right is just extremely amateur. You don't shrug that stuff off and save it for later, thats just stupid, especially if investing time earlier is gonna collectively save much more time later on netting you a huge return on investment.

Its almost as painful as watching SE bomb on FFXIV at this point. Its getting there for me.

[Zerocool]

At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if the game is pushed back to 2012.

[Agito]

They spent all the money on storywriters, voice actors, music and shitloads just so they can use the Star Wars IP. You can tell that everything else about the game had a piss poor low budget with unskilled developers taking a crap on it.

[Kwijiboe]

I'm pretty close to cancelling now.

[vrumpt]

I'm pretty close to cancelling now.

I'm still waiting for my chance to try the game out for myself, but if that doesn't happen i'll probably just cancel and hold out a couple more months for GW2. 2012 is looking pretty solid at this point, and I don't feel comfortable paying for this anymore.

[Katlan]

this is how I look at it: D3 at end of year which should be around the same time as SWTOR unless SWTOR is pushed back. Then GW2 early 2012, first quarter most likely. and if all else fails there is TERA that should be early summer release

[Bombur]

no more beta weekend tests for a bit.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showp...&postcount=337


I'm extremely frustrated with how Bioware is doing everything. It seems very poor and doesn't bode well at all for whats in store later on. They promise us testing weekends, and instead turn around and say "no, not really. maybe once or twice. maybe." Its just bullshit at this point. I could understand for maybe a few things, but redoing entire key systems because they weren't set up right is just extremely amateur. You don't shrug that stuff off and save it for later, thats just stupid, especially if investing time earlier is gonna collectively save much more time later on netting you a huge return on investment.

Its almost as painful as watching SE bomb on FFXIV at this point. Its getting there for me.

It is very cold and distasteful. I agree it is a hard pill to swallow BUT 2 weeks ago the current build was good enough to make a gaming convention hype and drive up over 50k more pre-order sales and then come back with this cold response.

There should always be a new build coming down the pipe in beta. I am a developer and once we release a build to internal testing we are already starting the next build.

This type of service leads me to believe the game has a chasm between the developers and the marketing and management office. Marketing and management seem to believe the game is about ready to launch and the Developers act like they have another year of testing...

ATM I would not be surprised to see this game release in late December if only to try and save face. Watch it will be a limited release December 31 to 5k pre-orders... Hey we said Holiday 2011 release!

[Ohemgee]

More time to enjoy skyrim

[Zerocool]

If it doesn't release before GW2, I might not pick it up at all. I mean we do still have a few months left in the year, but the way they're pussyfooting around with beta makes me wonder what they're afraid of. Granted, a lot of games don't do open stress testing until a few weeks to a month before launch, but they make it sound like they're not even close to a release yet.

[Alderaan]

From what i got to play i can say that there's no way this game should be released in 3 months. I'll be honest, if it wasn't Star Wars, i probably wouldn't try it again.